Don’t Be Afraid

I didn’t intend to post today. But I sat down to work with gathering up the worship for Sunday and began to recall conversations I’ve had over the last week about people and congregations that have become numb. It’s an important word and the state it describes spreads insidiously. A shot of numbness, when life is as sharp as a pulled tooth, is a good thing. But ongoing numbness is a tragic state.

I had a wonderful time last week at a gathering where I had opportunity to offer my research and my experience of vulnerable leadership; leadership inhabited with courage and creativity and compassion. Leadership that invites us to look at the truth of ourselves and live into it. We read together Oliver Jeffers’ book The Heart and the Bottle and I shared some excerpts from sermons that speak about vulnerable leadership. This week as I sit down to gather worship together I am inhabiting the now, imagining Sunday and recalling one of those sermons from Lent, The Eyes Have It.

I’m posting that sermon today as an invitation to the breath-taking possibility of vulnerable leadership and congregations that courageously face the thing they fear til they are healed.